Prior to a hermeneutics and a history

Literature, instead of being taught only as a historical and humanistic subject, should be taught as a rhetoric and a poetics prior to being taught as a hermeneutics and a history.
-Paul de Man, "The Return to Philology"

The power of this formulation comes right from the "prior to," and the fact that both "hermeneutics and history" are thereby conceived as something that "rhetoric and poetics" can actually (perhaps) do without. De Man makes us think not only of undoing the humanist function of the aesthetic object, which makes us "move so easily from literature to its apparent," but superficial, de Man would say, "prolongations in the spheres of self-knowledge, religion, and of politics"--in short that makes us fall prey to ideology in de Man's sense of the term (that which lets us think reference can be grasped precisely by referential means, in short that can allow us to turn literature into a grammar which can then be hermeneutically or historically decoded). He begins to show us that rhetoric, say, is not beholden to its hermeneutical basis except as a possible auxiliary function of its own (perhaps sovereign) operation. In other words, he begins to show us that rhetorical and poetic analysis can be "an examination of the structure of language prior to the meaning [the analysis] produce[s]" (i.e. it can be what he calls a philology, which is what he is defining in this quote right here: and thus we can now understand his extremely equivocal phrasing--the return to rhetoric [to study that proceeds by anti-hermeneutic means] is a return to philology [to the generation of results, of ends that are anti-hermeneutic]). This is not only powerful but radical--and should serve as some check on my dismissals of de Man in my last post. But this way of putting it also comes with increasing dangers--with a vagueness in its radicality.

How? Let's return to the ideological function that I just outlined. For de Man, we move much too quickly between literature to "apparent prolongations in the spheres of self-knowledge, of religion, and of politics" because we precisely make literature into what, through a decoding, just is a set of statements about these three (or more) spheres. This, in his eyes, is precisely the aesthetic ideology: the function of the aesthetic object is to deproblematize precisely this move from what the object is doing to its effects in these spheres (which are the spheres of humanism). Conceiving the work as aesthetic means only to conceive it itself as a prolongation of these spheres (and thus as humanist). You can see even more visibly de Man's desire to expose this as ideology, and oppose it systematically with rhetorical analysis, in his outlining of a literature course (Literature Z) in a fascinating memo from 1975: courses as they have traditionally been taught see

...literature as a succession of periods and movements that can be articulated as an historical narrative. With regard to individual works, the conception is essentiall paraphrastic and thematic, the assumption being that literature can be reduced to a set of statements which, taken together, lead to a better understanding of human existence. Literary studies then become, on the one hand, a branch of the history of culture and, on the other hand, a branch of existential and anthropological philosophy in its individual as well as its more collective aspects.
-"Proposal for Literature Z"

For de Man this is extremely debatable, however nice it is. For what is clear is that all this relies upon a process of exposing the prolongations that are supposedly already there: i.e. a hermeneutics and historical analysis. We find the meaning that is already there. De Man simply asks us to think about whether we can be sure meaning is there or not--and this is enough to begin to dispel the ideology: "the anthropological function of literature cannot be examined with any rigor before its epistemological or verbal status has been understood," he continues, which means that we have to think about what the thing is that we so quickly conceive of as a prolongation of our self-knowledge. Is it really such a thing that we can interpret unproblematically? That we can decode? Hermeneutics and history work in tandem with and ideology of aesthetics to shut down this avenue of inquiry. In this respect what they do is--as he says--actually veil the literariness of literature and prevent its reading.

These last phrases--which are more than polemical (I'd say they are equivocal, nominalist, and dangerous)--are taken from his other most concentrated engagement with these questions, "The Resistance to Theory." This is where the more precise language about reference that I use above is brought in (it is also present in Allegories of Reading): in short it is not only literariness that gets seen as a prolongation of effects of humanist self-knowledge, etc. but the workings of language itself (thus the grammar, the meaning that it is turned into is a humanist grammar, a grammar of these spheres). But let's stay with the danger (and witness de Man outlining these more precise effects of grammar etc.) in that essay:

To stress the by no means self-evident necessity of reading implies at least two things. First of all, it implies that literature is not a transparent message in which it can be taken for granted that the distinction between the message and the means of communication is clearly established. Second, and more problematically, it implies that the grammatical decoding of a text leaves a residue of indetermination that has to be, but cannot be, resolved by grammatical means, however extensively conceived. The extension of grammar to include para-figural dimensions is in fact the most remarkable and debatable strategy of contemporary semiology, especially in the study of syntagmatic and narrative structures. The codification of contextual elements well beyond the syntactical limits of the sentence [see Barthes S/Z and my last post] leads to the systematic study of metaphrastic dimensions and has considerably refined and expanded the knowledge of textual codes. It is equally clear, however, that this extension is always strategically directed towards the replacement of rhetorical figures by grammatical codes. The tendency to replace a rhetorical by grammatical terminology [...] is part of an explicit program, a program that is entirely admirable in its intent since it tends towards the mastering and clarification of meaning. The replacement of a hermeneutic by a semiotic model, of interpretation by decoding, would represent, in view of the baffling historical instability of textual meanings (including, of course, those of canonical texts) a considerable progress. Much of the hesitation associated with "reading" could thus be dispelled.
The argument can be made, however, that no grammatical decoding, however refined, could claim to reach the determining figural dimensions of a text...
-"The Resistance to Theory"

You see, this last move is what is crucial: de Man then expands what remains his question--whether literature is something that can be decoded--into a conclusion. Literature is, indeed, something that cannot be decoded. Look again at all the limits being set up: "no grammatical decoding, however refined, could claim to reach..."; "a text leaves a residue of indetermination that has to be, but cannot be, resolved by grammatical means, however extensively conceived." How can he be sure of this? In the same process what he does is actually define terms like "reading" to apply only to modes of analysis that conclude, like he does, that there just are spheres that can't be reached by grammar. This is how, in the above, he is able to dismiss semiology, which, as Barthes was so good at doing, precisely is trying to responsibly (clearly) get at the aspects of meaning that lie beyond what can be easily decoded. In S/Z codes don't, as de Man here puts it, strictly decode: they arrange themselves into a structure which we are, at the end of the day, quite unsure what to do with. And this to me seems quite resistant to a hermeneutic model, and can't just be dismissed as grammar by another means--as de Man does above.

In short the risk, the danger, is in this: de Man conceives rhetoric, and the reading of rhetoric as only operating in those spheres that a hermeneutics or a history, which see the text as a grammar, cannot penetrate. But this definition is only a negative one. As soon as this "cannot" becomes positive, what he is doing is actually acting as if he is sure about the content of this rhetorical sphere, of this indeterminacy--and it is on this basis that he can dismiss something like semiology. For if "a text leaves a residue of indetermination" how can de Man be so sure that this indetermination "has to be, but cannot be, resolved by grammatical means, however extensively conceived?" Frankly, there is no way to make this sentence make sense. We just cannot be sure that the indetermination will not be resolved precisely by grammatical means if the indetrmination is indeed indeterminate (this is where Derrida and de Man part ways, in my book).

But the point then is that de Man outlines a principle of resistance to hermeneutics that has, really, no basis. He outlines how the aesthetic ideology is complicit with hermenetutics, but then gives you an alternative that only consists in asserting that hermeneutics "misses the literariness of the literary"--which I think means nothing. It means nothing not because this literariness is beyond or anti-hermeneutics--i.e. because the project of finding a mode of analysis that is not hermeneutic is bunk (I think it remains, still, perhaps the greatest task we have to undertake). It means nothing because de Man is still too sure of what the this literariness looks like: in short, because it is merely defined negatively as the anti-hermeneutic, as rhetoric.

So what we get is a powerful formulation, which envisions a space for us beyond a hermeneutics and a history. But it gives us nothing to work off of except our own hatred for hermeneutics and history. This is what is dangerous about de Man. It seems, in my view, much better to go the route of semiology that he precisely outlines here--the grammatization of the rhetorical. For I do think that while de Man is very sensitive to the problems of making the rhetorical grammatical, he himself also ends up doing the same thing in being so confident about what the rhetorical consists of (it is precisely what cannot, cannot, no no no, ever, be reduced to grammar--and this extends into his allegorical readings, though to prove that takes another post). And at the same time, this hatred manifests itself through the equivocation of terms like "reading" and "literariness," which suddenly are terms that function only negatively and in order to castigate other critics: you must not miss the literariness, you are missing it, you are not reading, no no no--I on the other hand do understand it, I read, etc. In short, he gives us something extremely valuable, but he also--by the way he puts it--trains a lot of critics to be only good at shutting down other readings without any reasons for doing so. And this is extremely dangerous.

But I don't want to end just by condemning de Man. I just think his target is wrong: the grammatization of rhetoric is not the threat. The threat is in not seeing the necessity of rhetorical reading in the first place as an alternative to hermeneutics--in being subject to the aesthetic ideology, in his words. Insofar as he makes this clear to us--and he does I think in saying that literature should be taught "as a rhetoric and a poetics prior to being taught as a hermeneutics and a history"--what he is doing is crucial.

(A postscript: what I find dangerous is quite clear--he provides a critical vocabulary that allows others to take it up for, basically, evil ends--and I'm not the first to say this about de Man. But perhaps this position can be countered. Perhaps what de Man is doing in "training a lot of critics to be only good at shutting down other readings" is precisely a less responsible, but somewhat excusable version of something I have argued elsewhere. Actually echoing de Man [in "The Return to Philology" but also elsewhere], I say that theory displaces the evaluative function one found in literary criticism or in the humanities education prior to [and as a concern throughout] the New Criticism and the institution [beginning] of our profession. If we take this notion up, we might see de Man teaching us how to shut down readings in order to teach us to be theoretical in one specific sense--to articulate evaluations in terms that are theoretical and concerned more with the possibilities of their own utterance. I still say this is a very, very dubious way of going about this--at what point do we stop and just say that behind the theory is really just a power-grab? But at another level we can't just say de Man was completely ignorant of the fact that each one of his terms actually was formed to produce the capability of this bad use. I think, in the end, that both things are true: he was quite aware he was disseminating things that could be used maliciously, perhaps more easily than they could be used correctly, but that he also believed perversely that this would change the face of literature, in the long run, for the better--that is, even if it came at any cost...)